When the Metaverse company, formerly known as Facebook, revealed its plan to rebrand last October, it also announced a new stock ticker. At the time, execs told that after ten years as FB, its NASDAQ listing would transition to MVRS for the Metaverse.
However, after the investment fund listed under META vacated the symbol in January, Meta Platforms quickly established that it would use META instead, while at the same time announcing its first drop in daily active users ever.
It has filed paperwork saying the shift will become official before the market opens on June 9th.
Right now, people still think of Meta as the home of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but the plan is to make it into much more than those social media mainstays. Unfortunately, changing the company’s name hasn’t been enough for all investors to purchase into Mark Zuckerberg’s vision.
Their patience is particularly short given the blend of “headwinds” (competitors, regulators, and a pandemic-stricken economy) company execs refer to when discussing various issues that strain its growth in users and profitability.
Developing content for the Metaverse and augmented and virtual reality gear that will let people experience it costs the company billions of dollars, with the potential payoffs still years away.
But as the new footer for its company information reads, “Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive backgrounds like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.” One more branding element to move that home might not hurt, at least while its next-generation headset only makes cameos in blurred-out demo footage.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revised the company’s name to Meta in an endeavor to project it at the forefront of the up-and-coming digital frontier called the Metaverse.
It all began in June 2021, when Zuckerberg announced that the future of his company would reach far beyond the current setup. He argued that Facebook would strive to build a set of interconnected experiences straight out of the sci-fi world, dubbed Metaverse. To facilitate, the Metaverse is a lot more digital stuff that will be similar to a person’s physical life.
The Metaverse cluster of virtual worlds will permit users to meet, play, talk, and buy stuff. While the idea states tempting, in an era where most people are said to hold a ‘social media issue,’ this can also be a frightening idea, and Zuckerberg’s vision for the same appears to be on an abysmal start.
Most people would decide that too much orientation to social media is unhealthy. Social media has a tangible impact on people’s mental health using them. One of the many explanations could be that these apps trigger a host of unrealistic comparisons. Metaverse is a step ahead, or probably, multiple steps ahead. Conveying his vision for Metaverse, Zuckerberg illustrated how it would allow a person to be tossed into a virtual video call at any instant. Scary, right?
Zuckerberg addressed his employees while he was describing the new concept. The company’s divisions concentrated on products for several creators, communities, and virtual reality would work to realize this vision. “I believe most impressive is how these themes will come together into a larger idea,” Zuckerberg said. “Our overarching objective across all of these initiatives is to assist bring the metaverse to life.”
The CEO acknowledges that humans will relocate into the Metaverse in the future, altogether leaving behind the reality for a world that will be created and governed by them entirely. But, explaining his vision, he claimed that there would come a time when virtual worlds would be so absorbing that nobody would desire to leave, which is when the Metaverse would emerge. Many people assume the Metaverse is about a location. Still, one definition of it is a term when immersive digital globe becomes the primary way we live our energies and spend our time.
Several reports suggest how Meta intends to spend the next five to ten years creating an immersive virtual environment. It will include fragrance, touch, and sound. Moreover, it will allow users to immerse themselves in virtual reality completely.
It has made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a wrong move. While Metaverse became the discussion of Wall Street in no time at all, many analysts pointed out that it could be the most significant disruption to human life ever seen. On the other hand, critics have warned that it is getting wildly overhyped. It will be hard to police and termed a “regulatory nightmare.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, while conveying to the website Babylon Bee said that he is not in favor of having virtual reality goggles “strapped to your head the whole time.” However, a Harris Poll also found out that just 38 percent of Gen Zs approve that “the metaverse is the next significant thing and will become part of our lives in the next decade.”
Amid all the confusion and different ideas surrounding the idea and Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse, the CEO has asserted that all he cares about is inventing technology to enable people to encounter one another. However, how much truth persists in his statement is for the time to reveal.